Chesterbury Tales Pt. 14

It is Winter 1966. When five couples find themselves stranded at a remote high class inn by extreme weather conditions, they amuse each other by relating stories of an erotic nature, as well as taking part in all kinds of private and group sexual activities.

The Host began with a tale about a birthday orgy involving a current top film star. The Theatre Company Manager's tale was of her oral exploits with a famous actor and the Marketing Director's tale of how the 'Wife of Bath', with her daughter, had seduced a whole management team. The Politician's tale was about the husband's revenge, and the Model's tale about a country girl finding heaven between her legs - with the aid of her vicar. For the morning story of the fourth day, The Stockbroker's Tale showed how two resourceful women turned the tables on their partners who were trying to deceive them.

Chapter Fourteen. The Viscount's Tale. Mistaken identity.

After an exhausting afternoon of nonstop copulation, following Enid's group sex in the Sultan's harem, the guests had rested and showered before dinner. They assembled as usual at the sound of the dinner gong, and during cocktails, Emma asked Enid about her story of the cousins trick on their men.

'Bill and I were a bit confused about the logistics of your tale. One minute Charles is screwing his wife in her cousin's bed and the next he's screeching up the drive in his car. Er ... how?'

'Perhaps you missed a bit, or perhaps I didn't make it clear. After his romp with his wife, believing her to be cousin Rachel, he bemoaned the fact that it was time for him to leave her in order to arrive home 'officially'. So, whilst Derek was still screwing cousin Rachel in the next room believing her to be Charles' wife, Charles dressed quickly, and slipped out by the servant's entrance. It only took a couple of minutes to reach his car parked by the back gate and drive round to the front arriving home on time.'

'Ah! So where was it he said he had been?'

'Nowhere really. Having a business drink.'

'So it was a quickie, then?'

'Not necessarily. Don't forget, he was already waiting in the dark in Rachel's room when his wife came in, and got down to some serious screwing, whilst Derek was still treating himself to a brandy before his leisurely screw with Rachel. Charles was well ahead of the game!'

'Well,' Julie butted in, 'Bill has volunteered to tell the next tale, after dinner, about a famous actress who moved around in aristocratic circles.'

Bill was twenty-eight. His full name was William George Anthony Joseph Bradstone, the 6th Viscount Baring of Landry. Not surprisingly, he was known to all his friends as Bill! He succeeded to the title when his father was killed in a plane crash two years earlier. He was a well-built 5'10" with fine fair hair, which covered much of his body from neck to toe. It was a hereditary characteristic.

He was a freelance photographer and in his work, came across many beautiful women which turned him on, but professional etiquette prevented him from taking advantage of his position. Look but don't touch! Many of the models would, however, have been delighted to be Viscountess Baring!

He settled down on a settee with Emma beside him and told this tale.

This is the tale of an actress who is very famous both here and in the States, and who got away with murder! I shall call her Alice because she still has living descendants who might take unkindly to the story I am about to tell if her real name became known. The story was told to me by an old respected knight of the theatre who shall also remain nameless, who had unwittingly stumbled on Alice's diary. The revelations in it would make a fortune if published, he had said.

She was born Alice Beaver in the County of Cheshire. When she was barely ten years old, it seems, Alice's father deserted the family home for another, very beautiful, woman. An actress. The little girl had idolised her father and was at her happiest when he would take her on his knee before her bed time and tell her stories of adventure and fairies. When returning from visits to other parts of the country, he would return with presents for her, and recount tales of the travellers he had met.

Alice was aware of disagreements between her parents, but was distraught when her idol left them because, not unnaturally, she believed that he had abandoned her. Indeed, she was encouraged to think so. She thought that she herself must have been very naughty in some way for him to have left her, though she had no idea what it was she could have done.

Alice wept and grieved bitterly and her maternal grandmother, who was a dominant matriarch, refused to allow her father any contact with Alice. His letters and presents to her were intercepted and destroyed before Alice was aware of them.

This was helped by the fact that when he left home, the father moved away to make his fortune, as they say in adventure stories, whilst she was brought up to distrust men, all of whom are inherently selfish and cruel, and to despise her father in particular who had, she was told, left them almost penniless. Alice was not to know, of course, that her maternal grandmother had been seduced, became pregnant, and was obliged to marry the father, when but a girl of nineteen.

No other course of action was possible in those days, of course, and in some ways her grandmother was fortunate that the young man was willing to accept the child as his own and not to disown the woman, as happened all too frequently. To society, a single woman with child was treated as nothing better than a slut. Indeed, there was a time when she would have been beaten and placed in the stocks.

The ambition of Alice's grandmother, which had been to become a dancer in the ballet was consequently ruined, and, on top of that, the eventual birth of Alice's mother had left her with a damaged heart. She bore her affliction with great fortitude and a certain amount of enjoyment, but left no doubt about her feelings towards her husband and her general opinion of all men.

Her husband was an employee with a coaching company, and, being a thoughtful man and ever wishing to please his wife, in spite of her lack of feeling for him, Alice's grandfather died of heart failure when he was but forty-eight.

So, Alice grew up in a stern matriarchal society and came to be systematically brainwashed about the evil ways of the male. She was taught to hate her father with a burning passion, he whom she once adored, and was continuously instructed in the ways of revenge on the male sex. Her grandmother tutored her never to contact her father at any time, and to refuse any attempt by him to contact her in the future.

During these instructive years, money was not plentiful, but they managed to keep head above water. Her grandmother received a sum of money from a deceased relative and used it to send Alice to Madame Thorpe for elocution lessons. This lady claimed to have taught many of the famous stage actors and actresses of the day, and it was probably true, because Madame Thorpe ultimately found Alice a place in a respectable touring theatre company.

It was a hard struggle at first, and Alice had to learn to be unscrupulous and to look after herself by every means. Nature had endowed her with plump, prominent genitals, with generous lips and strong internal muscles to clutch its visitors. She had practised hard on various objects, and had become an expert at the art of seducing both men and women.

By planning and snaring people of influence in the theatre with her charm, she found champions to look after her interests and, eventually, reached the London stage where she made a big hit in a revival of a play by Mr Oscar Wilde. From there on, her future was assured and her liaisons more selective. She had taken the stage name of Alice Winsford, from a local town where she was brought up, and was now able to provide a comfortable house for her ailing mother and herself in the fashionable part of Pimlico.

By this time, her grandmother's sick heart had finally bowed to the inevitable, and she had been laid to rest at the age of seventy-two, having teetered on the brink of the grave for fifty years! Alice was now in great demand by society and was invited to private parties of the famous, and even some infamous, top-ranking aristocracy! She had succeeded in seducing, and having affairs with, two very rich patrons, men of property and political influence, both of whom had repaid her handsomely in return for her discretion and silence.

During all this time, however, in public life she kept her admirers at bay and gained a reputation for being haughty with men. It was even hinted that she preferred the company of women in her bed. She had, indeed, chosen a maid who was both able and willing to give her the physical satisfaction which her body frequently demanded, but she always welcomed a stiff cock of her choice, when the proper upper-class opportunity arose.

Alice's grandmother's plans worked perfectly in that Alice grew up to be self-sufficient and to wilfully use men entirely for her own spiteful ends. If she could humiliate them in some way at the same time, all the better. She never saw nor heard from her father ever again. That is, until in her mid-thirties when, to her astonishment, she saw him across the drawing room at Lady Banisher's end of season ball.

Alice was being escorted on that particular evening by the Hon. Arthur Frobisher, MP, who was a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State in the Commonwealth Office and one of society's most eligible bachelors. Arthur was the second son of a baronet, and was very fond of Alice. He had already hinted to her the possibility of a marriage contract between them, but Alice had been decidedly cool, though as gracious as ever, at the idea.

There was no doubt that Alice was a very attractive woman, though not a great beauty in the generally accepted sense. Her nose was too big for a start, and her eyes rather too wide apart. Her bosom was a little on the small side for what society usually required of the body beautiful, but, being an actress of repute, she was an expert at make-up and knew precisely how to make the most of her natural charms and how to dress to advantage.

She had had her hair - all her hair - re-coloured a burnished copper colour and was striking enough in her deportment to turn the heads of the young society stags. Alice was never punctual for any social gathering; she preferred making an entrance when announced, which usually caused something of a stir. Her eventual arrival at Lady Banisher's on the arm of the Honourable Arthur Frobisher was no exception.

They were greeted by Lord and Lady Banisher and made their way down the grand staircase to many admiring looks from the guests. There they joined the two-hundred or so guests - Lady Banisher was a popular hostess and anyone who was anybody in the London social scene could not afford to be absent from one of her social occasions - and through the blue haze of cigar smoke over Arthur's shoulder who was listening sympathetically to the Duchess, gossiping away about other guests, beyond the mass of overheated, chattering guests, Alice clearly saw the face of her hated father.

Her heart missed a beat and her face flushed as she fluttered her fan in her initial alarm. Although clearly older than she remembered him from her only photograph of him, he still looked remarkably young in the glare of the chandeliers, but the strong, firm nose and blue eyes were unmistakably those she remembered. When she had recovered her composure by taking several deep breaths, she closed her fan and tapped it lightly on her companion's forearm.

'Tell me, Arthur, who is that gentleman over there talking to Lady Dorothy?' Arthur peered over the heads and shoulders of the guests and spotted the man Alice referred to.

'Ah! That's Sir Ronald Beaver.' So she was right! 'He was recently knighted for his help in restoring the Tory party to power. Now the member for Chester.' It was indeed her father! 'He made a very large sum of money by speculating on an improbable venture in South Africa but which, remarkably, came off making his fortune. That was before I joined the Commonwealth office, so I'm not sure of the details.'

Alice stared at her father with curiosity. He was still a very handsome figure and had clearly taken care of himself during the past twenty-three years. Alice was unsure whether or not he would recognise her but was fairly confident that he wouldn't recognise, in her sophisticated appearance, the little girl of nine years old he left behind all those years ago.

'Do you want to know him?' Arthur asked.

'No! Not really. Not at the moment, anyway. I thought I had seen him before somewhere, that's all.'

Alice wasn't anxious to confront him, not knowing how she should approach the man she most hated. She wanted some time to adjust to the new situation.

'You may have seen him before,' Arthur told her, 'although he has only this season joined the London social scene.'

It was at a weekend private party in the country given by Lady Dorothy where Alice and her father next came together. Alice was aware that he would be invited and had spoken to Lady Dorothy about him. This party was a very much smaller affair and it was well known that most of the guests would, at one time or another, after plentiful glasses of wine or spirits, be expected to remove all their clothes and, perhaps, indulge in games of an explicit sexual nature.

So it would be impossible for Alice and her father not to be introduced to each other. On this occasion Alice had chosen to be escorted by the older Earl of Studeley, a widower of great wealth, charm and dignity. Beneath his noble appearance, however, was a sensual man whose sexual excesses in his younger days were well-known amongst the upper classes.

Indeed, it was rumoured that his wife had been the unfortunate victim of one of his more extreme sexual perversions, the result of which had been carefully hushed up. The country parties of Lord and Lady Bowler were very informal, and the entertainment, which was usually of a bawdy nature, often led to illicit assignations between some of the guests.

That was the whole idea, of course, and the guests were chosen with great care for their free-thinking attitudes and their utter discretion and were mostly known to each other. Newcomers were introduced with caution, even after being championed by the hosts, until their confidentiality and complete prudence was approved.

At the reception for her guests on the first evening, Miss Alice Winsford and Edward, Earl of Studeley, were introduced to Sir Ronald Beaver. He was accompanied by a small, pretty lady whom he introduced as Gloria, claiming her to be his niece. Alice could not recollect having any cousin called Delia, or any other name for that matter, but she smiled calmly at Sir Ronald as their eyes met.

There was no flicker of recognition in his eyes as he took Alice's hand and bowed formally. 'I have much admired your performances, Miss Winsford, since coming to London, and congratulate you on your great beauty.' And more in the same vein of flattery. When she saw that her father didn't recognise her as his daughter, Alice relaxed and began to enjoy the chat. Her secret gave her a certain feeling of power over him.

He had certainly retained his charm and handsome features. He laughed easily and lightly. Alice was curious to know what had happened to the mistress he left his family for, but her good breeding prevented any enquiry of that sort.

'You have remained single, I understand, Miss Winsford. That must be a great disappointment to the young society girls, since it keeps the young men looking in your direction rather than theirs.'

Alice laughed. 'It is a great misfortune to be pursued by so many of the young men, Sir Roland. But not as great as the misfortune of being ignored by them.'

Sir Roland enjoyed her Wildean wit. Alice found she could quote many of Wilde's aphorisms without embarrassment, for if they were recognised she was thought clever enough to have remembered them, and, if not, clever enough to have thought of them. The effect was the same.

'One can always tell the married man, Sir Roland. A married man has no morals whatever. And hopes that his pretty companion lacks them too. Do you have any morals, Sir Roland?'

Her father chuckled. 'Now, why should a handsome woman like you wonder that?' he asked. 'Would you rather I had none?'

Alice fanned herself calmly. 'My dear Sir Roland, a lady's views on morals should be known only to herself and her maid. But I might be persuaded to reveal them to you in the right circumstances.'

'Ah! If I knew that I should have no morals left!' she retorted. 'But what should I be doing here, at Lady Dorothy's, if I took morals seriously? Or you, Sir Roland for that matter.'

As the light chat went on, Alice had the ridiculous thought that it might be rather fun, and appropriate, to revenge herself on her father by seducing him and then to denounce him as a rapist. He was, after all, as good as a stranger to her, and an attractive one at that. But that would hardly be appropriate or even believed, at a weekend party such as this one.

She would need to think of another means of revenge. As they spoke, such a plan began to develop in her mind.

On the second evening, the guests were invited to attend the reception wearing only dressing gowns. But these dressing gowns were very elaborate affairs; more like fancy oriental robes of the most exquisite materials. Others were simple, but elegant. Eastern and Oriental influences were abundant in style and colouring.

The guests made sure that they still appeared at their finest and most elegant. Lady Dorothy wore a superbly ornate, embroidered silk satin dress of Japanese origin, with a short train, which accentuated her full white bosom without concealing too much of it and without any additional support.

Even her mother, the Dowager Duchess now in her early sixties, was dressed in a decorative decollete gown which accentuated the broad white expanse of her upper bosom. She was still a beautiful lady with plenty of life in her yet!

Alice, on the other hand was adorned in a simple white gown, flowing from the waist with a heavy ruche hem, a necking which plunged to her navel, and sufficiently diaphanous to allow the darker patches of nipples to be seen and the heart-shaped patch of hair below her belly, carefully shaped by her maid, to be tantalisingly discernable. It was designed to tease the men and, perhaps, excite one or two of the women.

The men looked mainly like rich sultans, some even sporting turbans. Others, however, chose to dress in richly embroidered Japanese kimonos and matching shoes. The assembly resembled the cast of a Verdi opera.

In the ballroom, a temporary stage had been erected at one end, and small tables surrounded by comfortable chairs were scattered around the room. Bottles of port for the men and carafes of wine for the ladies were placed on each table for consumption during the entertainment, to help release any inhibitions of the guests who were expected to enter into the spirit of the evening.

A music-hall entertainment was provided and the Chairman of the proceedings introduced a famous comedian, a popular ballad singer, scantily-dressed dancers and other entertainers.

The Chairman's introductions became progressively bawdy and the show ended with six otherwise nude ladies wearing large hats, white stockings held up with fancy garters, and shoes, being wooed by six lusty young men dressed only in straw hats, open blazers, transparent pouches to hold their genitals and prevent them from flapping about during the dance routine, short white socks and shoes, to the popular song 'Tell Me Pretty Maiden'. The choreography had managed to place the couples in sexually provocative positions to the amusement and appreciation of the whole audience.